Creating Valuable Content

With billions of hits daily, countless companies are desperate to rise up the ranks and occupy a space on the much coveted first page of search results.

There was a time when to place highly on Google’s rankings, you could flood a page with keywords without the copy having to actually make any sense.

Then Google got a little smarter.

It began to reward longer copy with a higher ranking, based on the notion that longer copy would be more informative and useful, thus warranting it a higher place on the Google ranking ladder. Unfortunately, companies quickly got wise to this new format, and found a way to outwit the robots.

There are countless websites who may well have a 1,000 word landing page about their product, but it typically reads something like this:

“Flat Rental

At flatrentalflats.com we find flats at a flat rental price to suit your flat rental needs when looking for flat rental.”

This sort of copy writing is at best lazy, at worst insulting to the customer and detrimental to the brand. Perhaps it saves money in the short term, but this sort of sly short cut usually catches up with you in the end.

Suddenly, you’re having to pay for all your lacklustre landing pages to be rewritten to prevent your website feeling the wrath of Google penalties.

Put yourself in a customer’s shoes.

They are interested in purchasing product X, but have not yet decided from who. They tap their query into Google and start exploring the different providers of said product. The first link they click on is yours.

What greets them is a long, rambling, semi-literate piece of copy which is neither useful nor informative. Why are they going to continue their journey on your website? Do you really believe that people can be fooled simply by the appearance of multiple paragraphs? Either you presume they will not read it at all, or worse still are arrogant enough to assume your brand is so authoritative you no longer need to bother producing actual, legible content.

It feels as though a lot of today’s content is designed with Google’s robots in mind, rather than actual sentient beings.

Consumers have more choice now than ever before, which means you need to work that much harder to convince them why to choose you over any other competitor. The internet has heralded a new era of transparency, where products and providers can be compared at the click of a mouse.

Once the customer arrives on your content they should not need to visit any other website. You should provide them with as much information about the product as you have available, and answer any possible questions they could have. Content needs to have value; it should be interesting, informative and authoritative.

If you do that, you will see far better results than creating something solely fit for a digital landfill.

Remember, people are your customers, and as much as these sheisty tactics might help you climb the rankings, in the end it is a person who will decide whether or not to make that purchase, not a program.